Continuing the fight against health care-associated infections

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is hosting a free webinar tomorrow on best practices to stop the spread of drug-resistant infections such as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae and Clostridium difficile.

Officials of the CDC say the major objectives of the webinar are to:

• Discuss the current state of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in U.S. health care facilities.
• Identify mechanisms that can be used to identify gaps in antibiotic stewardship and help to charter a course of action to decrease the spread of antibiotic resistance.
• Describe how health care organizations and public health can collaborate to stop the spread of antibiotic-resistant germs and C. diff between facilities.

The webinar comes at a time when there has been heightened focus on infection prevention. In June, the White House hosted a forum on combating drug-resistant bacteria and enhancing good antibiotic stewardship. Just months before that, it released a National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria.

As health systems and public health agencies rally together to improve their infection prevention efforts, studies on methods to prescribe antibiotics, increase hand-hygiene compliance and improve environmental services cleaning have emerged. However, in the area of hospital cleaning, one team of researchers believes that the health care industry needs more comparative data to establish what are the most effective cleaning methods used to reduce health care-associated infections.

Perhaps tomorrow's CDC webinar will help to shed some light.